Update: Apparently this was a secret that wasn’t supposed to get out. The concept art and the info about the project has been removed from the company’s site.
It’s been no secret that Disneyland is looking to upgrade their current Monorail fleet. They couldn’t get the original manufacturer to do the job, they were too busy filling contracts for real world monorail and high speed train systems. Things got so bad that one of the four trains was being canabalized for parts and another was down for reverse engineering.
Now apparently a company name Burke Design has been hired on to do the composite engineering and assist Imagineering with the manufacturing of the Monorail Mark VII.
I love the new design. It’s very similar to the original monorails (see right), although without the bubble on top. I doubt it will be enough to inspire a new generation of mass transportation enthusiasts, but hey it’s a start. Looks like production could be done as soon as the end of this year with the new bodies appearing in 2007 along the railway in the sky at Disneyland.
[ disney, disneyland, monorail, burke+design, mark+vii, design, transportation, mass+transit, themepark, theme+park, walt+disney, imagineer, imagineering, ]